The Senate Republican Caucus is blessed to have some very talented and committed professionals working with us as staffers. They regularly write very compelling and dead-on policy commentary.
Here is an example of their great work.
I’d love to claim credit for the words below, but it’s only right to give credit where it is deserved.
Welfare Needs To Be A Safety Net, Not A Hammock
A little more than 10 years ago, California and the nation embarked on an ambitious effort to enact real welfare reform, turning away from an entitlement culture that promoted irresponsibility and indolence to a system designed to transition welfare recipients into the workforce.
The undertaking was roundly criticized by liberals, often with apocalyptic scenarios about children by the millions being pushed into poverty. What actually resulted was extraordinary. Since 1996, welfare caseloads have dropped 56 percent. As recipients left the bread line to become breadwinners, the child poverty rate decreased as well – from 20.8 percent in 1995 to 17.8 percent in 2004. Within six years of the federal Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, the poverty rate for children of single-mothers had fallen to its lowest recorded level.
Though welfare reform has been successful, California is backsliding. Not enough recipients of CalWORKS benefits are working sufficient hours to meet federal work participation requirements, setting California up for huge fiscal penalties. Today, only 25% of CalWORKS recipients meet federal work requirements, down from a 1999 high of 40%.
In response, the Governor’s proposed budget contains reasonable reforms to right California’s listing welfare ship and get us to the 50% work participation rate required by the federal government. More importantly, the changes will refocus the program on getting welfare recipients back to work and into lifestyles of self-sufficiency rather than government dependency.
Specifically, the proposal implements sanctions when an adult welfare recipient refuses to comply with program requirements beyond 90 days, continues benefits for families beyond their 60-month time limit only if they meet the federal work requirements, and limits child-only benefits – for families that include felons on the lam and illegal immigrants – to 60 months.
Not surprisingly, liberal lawmakers in California are inaccurately bemoaning the proposal as an attack on children. Assemblyman John Laird, who chairs the Assembly Budget Committee, dismissed it saying, “punitive approaches don’t put people back to work.” But, CalWORKS has never been about getting something for nothing. Its purpose – made clear to every applicant – is to transition families from welfare to the work force. Recipients are required to participate in welfare-to-work activities as a condition of eligibility. No one is being cut off without warning. They have 60 months – five years – to find gainful employment. That’s not “punitive;” it’s more than reasonable.
Welfare should be a detour, not a destination. And, it is our responsibility to guard the state’s scarce resources against those who would turn “temporary assistance” into a permanent lifestyle. We owe it to their children, too, lest we foster a cycle of intergenerational dependency. According to testimony provided before Congress by the CATO Institute, children raised in families on welfare are seven times more likely than other children to eventually become dependent on welfare themselves.
It is not as though CalWORKS beneficiaries are asked to fend for themselves. Those who must participate in Welfare-To-Work services enter a program that is designed to help them acquire job skills. Every one of California’s 109 community college campuses has a CalWORKS program for recipients in their communities. Recipients may receive food stamps, child care, transportation assistance, Medi-Cal, and preventative medical check-ups. Social workers are available to help with family strife, substance abuse, legal issues, and other problems.
Once they are employed and are no longer eligible for welfare, recipients can still be given help with medical care and child care expenses. The system is designed to ensure that working always pays more than welfare.
In the coming weeks, you’ll hear that the Governor’s welfare reform proposals are draconian – nothing less than an attempt to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. What it really is, however, is a course correction, necessitated by federal mandates and a widespread failure to live up to the requirements associated with what is, in fact, not an entitlement, but conditional assistance.
It is news to no one – least of all recipients themselves – that those on welfare are obligated to return to the workforce as soon as possible. We are not talking about people on disability, but of able-bodied grown-ups capable of working and assuming responsibility for their lives and futures and those of their children.
No one in the Governor’s Office stood blind-folded at a dart board when coming up with these changes. Nor, do its supporters have a penchant for sticking it to the poor. But to paraphrase an old adage, we cannot allow anyone to use the safety net as a hammock. We must get California’s welfare system back on track, not only for the families served by the program, but for the taxpayers who’ll be punished financially if we don’t.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. In the future, I’ll continue to pass along more of these commentaries about a wide variety of important public policy issues.